Garrett heaved on the rope and tried to recover the flail, but it was far too little, far too late. The clumsy weapon couldn’t be recovered fast enough, and a ghoul pounced through the hole head first, moving with catlike agility. It landed in a crouch and leapt for my throat with claws outstretched before Garrett could even get it halfway back. I flinched backwards, bringing up a javelin in between me and the monster.

The claws scraped against the wood as the bestial undead threw its weight into the attack and bore me to the ground. My back slammed into the cold hard ground and the undead’s triple rows of razor teeth were close enough to pick out the scraps of rotten flesh trapped between them.

I tried to push the undead off of me, but the creature was far too heavy for me to lift normally, let alone when it was fighting back. It slowly forced me down, taking up what little breathing room I had left until its lolling tongue could reach down to slurp over my face.

I hissed at the ghoul and snapped out, catching the tip of its over eager tongue in my own mouth and chomping down with the full force of my panic and adrenaline. The ghoul reeled back in shock, its face a mask of pained confusion as it stared down at its overextended tongue. Yeah, you aren’t the only one with teeth fucker.

I ground away at the foul-tasting slip of rotten flesh trapped in my jaws, and as the ghoul flinched and whimpered I finally got the breathing room to release my javelin with one hand, reach into a pouch, and withdraw my chunk of flint. I brought it around to slam into the ghoul’s temple again and again.

The ghoul reeled back with each blow, but it couldn’t retreat without sacrificing its tongue to my teeth, and I wasn’t about to stop. I kept driving the point home until I felt the crunching feeling of breaking bone reverberate through my arm, heedless of the jagged edges digging into my flesh.

I awkwardly drew up my legs, planted them against the ghoul’s chest, and heaved its corpse aside before sitting back up to face the opening. I hadn’t had time to worry about Garrett’s problems, and it was clear he hadn’t had time to worry about mine. He was a whirlwind of flashing steel, blades slicing flesh and rending bone. It was a terrifying sight to behold, even as the grim reminder of the human’s power was proving inadequate to stem the tide.

Garrett was, quite sensibly, taking the safe option. Of course, in this case the safe option involved dodging deadly claws by a hair, so a more sensible person would have avoided this mess entirely, but this was Garrett. As it was he was winning, but far too slowly for it to matter. He was focusing on defense, not closing into killing distance, but merely punishing every strike that came his way with his blades. The tactics were fundamentally sound, every ghoul featured lopped off fingers and arms, but in the time it’d taken him another two more ghouls had broken through. They’d pried apart the shattered brick at the edges of the hole with their supernatural strength and now that the hole was large enough for two to squeeze through at once even the writhing tangle of limbs and bodies at the entrance wasn’t going to stop them from getting through fast enough to kill us.

Sometimes you had to take the risk of death if you wanted any chance at survival. If Garrett couldn’t realize that, then I would have to act. I snatched up a javelin and scrambled around the side of the fighting. I wasn’t about to step into the heat of it, but my fate depended on its outcome nonetheless.

I drew back my arm and whipped it forward with the full inhuman speed my Stats offered. The javelin flashed through the air and found root in a ghoul’s chest as it tried to climb through. The ghoul recoiled, but it didn’t stop. Its fellow ghouls took advantage of its brief distraction to drag it back and fight for its place at the front.

Not good enough. I dashed forwards, gaining speed and torquing all of my humble weight into a second javelin as I threw it. The javelin impacted with far more force than the first, and I didn’t stop there. I kept running forward, grasping the end of my javelin and slamming into it chest first with every scrap of weight and momentum I could muster. The javelin sunk deeper, shuddered as it ground against bone, and finally shot out into the open air of the other side before finding root in flesh again.

The ghoul’s bony arms closed around me, but I squirmed out, falling beneath its grasp and scrambling backwards. The animalistic undead wasn’t about to let a little thing like impalement slow it down and pulled itself free from the gap.

The javelin jerked at its movement, ripping at the flesh of the ghoul behind it. The creature howled its bloody rage at the pain and buried its claws in the ghoul it could only see as responsible, blocking the only route into the room with gnashing teeth and tearing claws. The violence didn’t take long to spread, turning the scramble for the entrance into a bloody mess.

I smirked to myself. One problem down, one to go.

I turned to face Garrett’s struggle, and found him even worse off than before. Wonderful. The five ghouls had finally gathered what little wits they had and worked together to corner the bastard. Garrett leapt backwards, completely oblivious to his surroundings. Damn idiot was just gonna brain himself against the wall. I’d have to pull his fool ass out of the fi-

Garrett pivoted midair, hitting feet first and letting his own momentum drive him into a crouch against it three feet off the ground before leaping with explosive force. He soared through the air, clearing the first few ghouls effortlessly. Two, however, proved their preternatural reflexes superior to even my own and leapt to meet him.

I jolted back into motion. I wasn’t going to get beaten by a pair of glorified zombies. I whipped a javelin out, but failed to land a solid hit, only managing to catch one ghoul in the meat of its thigh. Luckily, that was enough. The ghoul flinched, wasting its brief window to grab hold of Garrett.

The second ghoul slammed into Garrett midair and there was nothing I could do about it. They tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs and blood. I reached for my next javelin, but by the time my hand clutched at empty air and I realized I was out it was already over.

The ghoul lashed out with its full fury. It had finally closed to grappling distance, and its feral instincts were telling it the same cold hard facts that any hunter could tell you; teeth and claws were the ideal close quarters weapons. You could kill any boar or wolf with a spear, but if it got inside your reach you were done. The ghoul sunk its claws into Garrett’s arm and brought the limb to its teeth.

Of course, daggers were close quarter weapons too. Garrett brought his dagger up and across the ghoul’s face, its razor edged sliding effortlessly through the muscle tying the left half of its jaw to its face. Garrett kicked the ghoul off of him and rolled free.

Garrett pushed off the ground with one bloodsoaked hand and stumbled to his feet. The ghouls scrambled after him, the closest lunging forwards even with half its jaw missing. It brought its head down, ramming the bloody fangs of its upper jaw down into Garrett’s shoulder and latching on with its claws.

I forced aside my own reluctance to engage in melee and drew the only real weapon I had left, my club, and swung it into the inside of the ghoul’s elbow. The thorns drove into its tendons and muscles and the arc of my swing ripped jagged tears in it’s flesh.

Garrett grabbed the ghoul by its remaining good arm and flung it off of him, pivoting and putting the full force of his entire body into the throw as he hurled the undead into the pack behind him. The crippled ghoul slammed into the middle ghoul, still slowed by the javelin imbedded in its thigh, but the pair flanking it dodged without so much as slowing down.

Ghouls were starting to piss me the fuck off. Damn bastards were like zombies that actually had the reflexes to respond to the world instead of just staring at it gormlessly. At least they didn’t seem to share their lesser cousin’s complete immunity to pain.

“Go left.” I suited my words and went for the right one myself. I attacked with broad swings of my thorn-bladed club, keeping it at arm’s length. Of course, that was goblin arm length, and I wasn’t fighting one of my fellows. Luckily I was right about the ghoul’s nature, and it shied back from the blows, afraid to risk a hit.

That was where my luck ended. The ghoul’s own hesitation was the only thing keeping me alive, and I couldn’t keep my distance forever. I could hear the sounds of Garrett’s fight to my left, but I knew the two fallen ghouls wouldn’t stay down long, and the fighting at the entrance was starting to die down. We had to win this fight, decisively, or we’d be swarmed.

Well, more swarmed than we already were.

I slowed my swing at its final moment, letting myself pause in the follow through a hair longer than necessary. The ghoul lunged forwards, and my mouth split into a wide grin. I yanked my weapon back, catching the thorns on the ghoul’s grasping arm like sawteeth on a tree limb and throwing it off balance by sidestepping its attack and pulling it forward in the same direction as its own movement. The ghoul stumbled past me and I turned my attention to its brethren.

Garrett’s opponent already bore a number of gashes across its forearms, oozing black ichor and sizzling faintly at the edges, but Garrett was still wasting time trying to set up a deathblow. We didn’t have time for that shit. I hooked my thorns into its neck and yanked backwards. The ghoul’s arms whirled as it tried to keep its balance and Garrett stepped in to drive a dagger through its eye.

I jumped to the side, raking my club across an oncoming ghoul’s ankle. It tumbled to the ground as I moved to the next. It lunged at me, but I was already dodging backwards one step ahead, and Garrett was happy to take advantage of its distraction. His blade plunged into its spine and a single wrenching twist sent it falling to the ground in a limp heap.

I stepped to meet the next ghoul and took advantage of my superior reach to batter at its limbs and let Garrett finish it as it was distracted.

“Fucking, finally.” I said.

The vicious melee over the entrance I’d started had reached its bloody conclusion and one ghoul stood triumphant just inside the room, screeching its joy into the dank cavern air.

Garrett flicked his wrist and a blade tumbled through the air to plant itself in the ghoul’s skull. Its screech cut off into a fading gurgle and the chemical scent of burning ichor stung my nostrils as the corpse hit the ground.

“If you could kill them that fast what the hell did we almost die for?”

Garrett turned his nose up, failing to make eye contact. “Of course something like you would utterly fail to understand any kind of resource conservation.”

I stepped up and swung my club down at the ghouls still struggling to squirm through the opening. The once open hole was packed with ghoul bodies, sent to the ground in a mass of grappling bodies as they’d turned their claws on each other. The tight confines and angry undead slowed them down, but the persistent bastards were still coming. At least their current vulnerable state gave me the time to use my club properly. A weapon like this wasn’t suited to fighting anything that wouldn’t bleed out and the inability of the ghouls to fully defend themselves let me compensate by simply striking again and again until I’d stripped enough flesh from bone to make movement impossible.

“Your blades are worth more than your life? That’s not conserving resources, that’s just fucking dumb.” And stupid. If he got himself killed than something (probably me) would just take his stuff and he’d have neither life nor possessions.

Garrett sneered down at me as he stepped up to hold the line alongside me. “If you rats could hold anything without consuming it like the voracious vermin you are then maybe you would have better weapons than sticks and stones.”

I dodged a claw as a ghoul managed to worm an arm free from the mass.“You wouldn’t even have lost anything dumbass!”

I reached over to the last ghoul corpse and ripped the knife from its skull. “Look!” I gesticulated with the knife. “It's just damn fine! You can just pick them back up again. Stop trying to defend your idiocy with racism and just learn from your fucking mistakes.”

Garrett clenched his jaw. “Do not presume to lecture me. Especially not when you could be fucking helping!” He was keeping the ghouls from squirming their way through with a flurry of stabs, but even his longest knives forced him to get inside their reach if he wanted a kill. Even fighting cautiously his forearms were already covered in scratches.

I snorted. “Then stop being wrong.” I turned and plunged the dagger I was still holding into the head of a ‘dead’ ghoul that had been slowly creeping towards me. The already cramped entrance had turned into a charnel house. Ghouls struggled over and around one another in a writhing mass of hunger and bloodlust, inching steadily forwards as the individual ghouls that composed it pulled and snapped at one another as much as us.

Garrett had drawn a viciously curved blade from somewhere and set about solving his inferior reach by just hacking off all the limbs he could get at. I wasn’t nearly so effective, with my narrow blade too short to reach their bodies and too thin to hack effectively I was reduced to inflicting mere scratches with it. The club did better, but it still took two or three swings to accomplish what Garrett did in one.

I stepped back from the fighting. I was just in the way, and we needed a better plan than this. I tried to see through the entrance, but I couldn’t make out anything beyond it besides more ghouls preying on their fellows as Garrett crippled them. As soon as a ghoul was weak enough to kill it was snatched back and devoured by its own kind. We couldn’t even hope to clog the passage with their corpses.

I switched focus, straining my ears. What for I couldn’t really say, save that I hoped for a miracle. I got one; the world pulled something new out of its ass just to fuck me over.

“Garrett!” I said as I heard the sound of falling bricks. “The bastards are digging a new entrance!”

“Than do something about it!” Garrett spat black ichor from his mouth. “I’m kind of busy!”

Do something about it. Right. How unreasonable of him to just throw all the responsibility of inventing a solution on somebody else like that.

I scanned the walls, but a handy wand of incineration failed to materialize. There was no better weapon than the rock flail, and their was no way I had the strength to wield it, let alone properly control it. Okay, nothing to work with there. “Garrett, what’ve you got in your pockets!”

Garrett’s blows were falling on skulls and ribs now, the crippled bodies of slain ghouls rising in a tide of undead flesh, propelled by the mass of the swarm behind them. “No!”

I could see the holes in the wall now, they’d reached our side, all they had to do was widen it now. “No?! The fuck do you mean no!? How am I supposed to save our asses without anything to work with!?”

Garrett shot a kick into the chest of a particularly overeager ghoul, sending it flying back into the tide with the wet crunch of breaking ribs. “If I had anything to work with I’d have damn well used it!”

Useless bastard. I couldn’t rely on him, couldn’t find anything in the environment, all I had was myself…

Fucking magic. If a solution failed to magically appear then I would magically appear it myself.

I conjured my soul sense and the splendor of my soul spread out before me. The artifice that granted me my powers was stretching ever upwards, but even the all the deaths of the last few minutes weren’t enough to give me more than a level or two, less than the singular undead I’d slain before. Still, a single full level was more than enough to give me what I needed.

A Skill. I could do anything, summon flames, spit acid, or fly. Except… could I? A Skill required proper visualization, proper understanding. How could a goblin who’d spent most of his life hiding or running from threats truly understand the level of transcendent violence that would be required to get us out of this crap?

He couldn’t. If running and hiding were the only things I was truly good at, then I’d just have to get a whole lot better at them. I scanned the room again, maintaining my soul sense all the while. What kind of power could hide you from a pack of feral ghouls in a bare stone room?

Invisibility? Camouflage? No. I was no human, to rely only on sight, and neither were my enemies. I needed something that could fool all the senses, not just one. Besides, I’d never been invisible anyway. I might be able to craft such a Skill, but not fast enough to matter. I’d forged my Stats with only a single overheard lesson by relying on that I knew best, I’d have to forge my first Skill the same way if I wanted to finish it in time for it to matter.

What was my greatest strength in stealth, the thing that had let me survive as a dissident in human and goblin society alike, defying both man and hob?

I was forgettable. For hobs just another slave to kick out of the way, for humans an annoying vermin no different from the rats. I was unimportant. Why would one more goblin matter? I was ignorable. A shadow on the wall, a whisper on the breeze. Probably nothing. Probably.

My level pulsed in time with my heart as it attained its new purpose. I turned back to Garrett. The human had been driven back far enough to let the ghouls spill out into the room, but he wasn’t quite down yet. The maimed ghouls had been pushed forward by the mass behind them, giving him a few precious seconds before the intact foes burst through. He was panting with exertion and even if he hadn’t taken a hit yet he had little chance of scraping out a victory.

Could I save him? I was confident my power could conceal me, but anyone else would be an issue, if my Skill was even capable of hiding anyone at all when they were being directly looked at. People didn’t overlook what they were already paying attention to.

He was as good as dead. You’d have to be crazy to risk your life to save an ass like him. But I wasn’t fooling myself. If I let him die, that would be what it was, not preserving myself, not restraint, but murdering someone else so I would get to live.

And I think I was alright with that.